


Rainy Days and Starry Nights

by sexonastick



Category: Lost
Genre: Background Femslash, Female Characters, Gen, Insanity, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-28
Updated: 2010-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-14 04:45:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexonastick/pseuds/sexonastick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire isn't crazy. She's just abstract.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>But the thrill of readiness heats in her blood, beats through her veins, and Claire holds her rifle close to her chest to feel the calm of its cool touch.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Rainy Days and Starry Nights

**Author's Note:**

> The violence is described mostly in abstract, but a lot of the things happening are pretty gross in reality.
> 
> Set during, before, and after the episode "Sundown."

Claire dreams in splashes of color, like swirls of paint. The blood she sees when she closes her eyes is so much more vivid than the waking world and the brown stain beneath her fingernails.

She dreams. Tiny, trusting smile and golden hair. Little hands and soft belly, wet smile and world full of wonder. Always laughing.

Until the screaming; the pinching, snatching hands. Claire's voice locked up tight in her throat, she calls saying, _Aaron baby_ , shaking and shouting, _Mummy's coming_.

The stink of blood is all around and she trips when she tries to run.

Awake again, curled tight on her side with heels dug into the dirt. Claire smells the air, catching the scent on the wind, and moves quickly to a rocky outcrop of shelter. Rain is coming.

*

Something is coming. She hears a music in the dirt, ear pressed to the ground. The sound of scurrying. Those men from the temple move together, never alone. They are like mice, darting and ducking.

They fear her. She laughs and they look to the sky. They look for God, but He does not see the Island. He doesn't hear the screams or the thrashing, their feet kicking in the muddy grass.

They are never alone and she does not want them to be lonely. She sits them together at the base of a tree, friend with friend. Their open mouths point to the temple; their toes point to the sky.

Claire isn't lonely but she stays with them a while. She hums to herself, keeping time with the beating of the earth, and puts a hand to one man's cheek until he feels as cold as she is.

*

"Something is coming," says her friend. He watches the stars with hands on his knees.

Claire looks upward too but sees only muddy darkness pricked by light. It looks like an old injury that has slowly begun to seep. Droplets falling to earth.

"I hope you're ready."

*

She is screaming. She screams so much her throat stops making sound, but still she feels it in her chest. Her skin is splitting, pulling away. She is come apart, completely undone.

The mark on her shoulder burns, flaming hot against the creeping cold, the icy fingertips that snatch at her heart, along her arms and in her hair, behind her eyes and clutching her tongue, stopping up her voice.

She is running, she is falling. She's somewhere else now, she is safe. She will not be caught again.

*

That man. The one with the anxious impatience and the rising fear in his eyes. _You must_ , he'd said. _Your child_ , he'd said. _Yours to raise._

She sees him now. He is in her dreams, of course. She dreams of eternity, everything that is or was. Playing in the grass, and flowers in blonde hair. A mother laughs, says, "Careful," but the girl doesn't listen, she knows better. She is running, dancing, and though she falls she laughs. "What a mess you are," her mother says and lifts her from the grass.

She dreams in sunlight and stardust of blackness no eye can see through, but with his hand in hers she feels the way. She takes one steady step after another.

_You must_ , the man is saying, his feet disturbing the water in the stream with each slow step. He is standing and staring as Claire washes the blood from her hands. It snakes away in tiny trails that break against his legs.

_Your child._

His eyes are sad and he is accusing but she does not apologize to anyone now and so she will not speak back. She'll wait until he's in a better mood, more polite.

The stain beneath her nails is never going away. Even the cracks in her dry skin are marked a faded red.

She scrubs and then looks up again. He's gone.

*

They are moving quickly. Their fear gives them away. She can nearly hear the beating of their hearts, slick and steady hands slipping over the triggers of their guns. They think themselves ready.

But the thrill of readiness heats in her blood, beats through her veins, and Claire holds her rifle close to her chest to feel the calm of its cool touch. Across from her, watching from beyond a tree, her friend is smiling. He is a face of many mouths but one steady expression of comfort. He smiles and she smiles back.

The light behind his eyes is only half as blinding as the flash and smoke when the guns go off.

*

_You must_ , he says, standing in their blood without seeming to notice the stink of it. It makes Claire's stomach clench like a fist.

_Your boy._

He is so small. His eyes are big as the ocean and his smile is warm. She clutches cold hands to her side and thinks of him, of her sweet Aaron.

Her baby's face fills up the aching hole in Claire's chest as she works. The rope digs deep into the man's skin, but he's far past bruising now. "You look lovely," she says and lifts him toward the treetops and stars, a warning sign for all his friends.

Their fear is not enough; she wants surrender now. They must give her back her Aaron.

*

She saves his life before she knows his face. Claire knows all her friends on sight. She remembers but his face was hidden, just as his eyes are closed off now. He is hiding from her still.

Jin says her name so many times, as if unsure it's really her. As if she might look like the ghost that she feels living in her skin. The tingling in the tips of her toes and fingers might be real after all, she could be disappearing slowly.

He says "Claire," and she laughs to remember that's her, that's real. He says it again, this time lifting his voice, frowning. He seems unsure of her and she is steadier now, impatient.

"Claire?"

She doesn't answer, doesn't want to. Her friend doesn't ask so many questions, doesn't look at her so strange. Her name sounds wrong in Jin's mouth, or on the air at all. Her friend doesn't use it often. He only needs to smile and look, saying _you_ , and she knows. They know each other's hearts like they know the sky or the ground under their feet.

She steps faster now, steady with purpose. He says _temple_ and she goes. Every part of her already knows the way. She has branches in her hair and snails at her feet. She is a princess in a fairy tale and she will dance the night away. Her friends will not leave again.

*

She is outside looking in, downward looking up. The inside of her mouth tastes like blood, her own she thinks. She watches Kate's face and wishes the blood were hers. She would taste like regret and deep memories of mistakes. Her breath would be like Aaron's laughter, her mouth just like his smiles.

Claire wants to take and break every one of her fingers to keep and remember her baby's touch, how he would grab her nose as they laughed together. She wants to make Kate scream, hear him shaking in her voice.

*

The sky lifts away and the trees fall down. She can hear his voice calling through the trees and then quickly down the hall, like the roar of an ocean. He is laughter and the thrill of an approaching storm. He is the rattle of a death that goes on forever.

She is falling, collapsing like a star or all the sky. She is gaining speed as she goes, and never will she hit the ground. She is weightless and eternal, her friend's hand against her own.

"Oh, Kate," she says into the quiet dark. "Rescue _me_?"

*

She feels Kate's throat underneath each fingertip, so warm and throbbing. Her tears taste like lies, ash on Claire's tongue.

Kate's eyes are hollow and so is her mouth. Claire can reach deep inside and find that she is nothing. Her friend says "flawed," that's what Kate is. Her mouth tastes bitter against Claire's tongue, and the way she quivers is so weak. She is so small and cowardly, always running. Unworthy of their child.

"Don't blame her for how she was born," he says, and he is laughing so Claire smiles too. She is softer when she reaches again, gentle like a passing breeze.

There's a warmth inside Kate's mouth that aches. Just to touch her is enough to burn Claire's palm.

She struggles so much, always wriggling.

"Like a worm," he says, smiling. She is flawed, he says. She is broken. No longer eligible. Claire doesn't know what he means, but she enjoys the sound of the words, keeps it saved in the shell of her ear like a pearl.

She takes it out later, whispering into her cupped hands in the dark. Kate is watching her, eyes wide with fear but her mouth set, so determined.

Claire hates her for how she stares and doesn't flinch. Kate meets her gaze and does not look away. She is flawed and she is stupid. She will regret it later.

*

The invisible weight left from the touch of the dead man's fingers that had been clinging to his stolen rifle drags Kate's arm down near her side and Claire pins it there. She breathes in, she breathes out. She laughs and all the leaves shiver.

She presses herself so close to Kate that their bodies are like two slender trees with roots grown overlapping. _Tell me_ , she is saying with her mouth against Kate's ear. She is so close to she that they almost need no words. It is like the earth turning, the music of her friend. _My baby_ , she is saying and Kate nods as if she understands, though it's clear that she doesn't. Not yet.

Kate wraps her arms around Claire, holding her in a tight embrace. Too tight and too close, their hearts are overlapping. It takes effort for her not to bite and run, to hold steady and still with nails driving into her palms. She must know about her baby, she must let this woman say.

"He's waiting for you," Kate says and touches Claire's hair. Her friend never touches her like this, so quiet and close together. The nails drive further into her palms. "I'll bring you back to him."

"Rescue me?" Claire whispers as stars streak the sky a gory black and light, an open wound. She hates herself for the way the fire in Kate's eyes scares her now, suddenly so close. Look too long and she will burn away everything that's left of her, of she, of them.

Her friend is standing close, his eyes on their stilled footsteps. The she who is Claire walks away from the they who is them, to take his hand and walk on at his side with Kate following clumsy behind.


End file.
